Ones and Zeros

SYNOPSIS

From Dan Wells, author of the New York Times bestselling Partials Sequence and the John Cleaver series, comes the second book in a dark, pulse-pounding sci-fi-noir series set in 2050 Los Angeles.

Overworld. It’s more than just the world’s most popular e-sport—for thousands of VR teams around the globe, Overworld is life. It means fame and fortune, or maybe it’s a ticket out of obscurity or poverty. If you have a connection to the internet and four friends you trust with your life, anything is possible.

Marisa Carneseca is on the hunt for a mysterious hacker named Grendel when she receives word that her amateur Overworld team has been invited to Forward Motion, one of the most exclusive tournaments of the year. For Marisa, this could mean anything—a chance to finally go pro and to help her family, stuck in an LA neighborhood on the wrong side of the growing divide between the rich and the poor. But Forward Motion turns out to be more than it seems—rife with corruption, infighting, and danger—and Marisa runs headlong into Alain Bensoussan, a beautiful, dangerous underground freedom fighter who reveals to her the darker side of the forces behind the tournament. It soon becomes clear that, in this game, winning might be the only way to get out alive.

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Reviews

“Do you matter? Are you a one or a zero? In 2050 in the LA neighborhood of Mirador, 17-year-old Latina Marisa Carneseca’s family is about to lose their restaurant. In series opener Bluescreen (2016), Mari and her multiethnic VR team Cherry Dogs saved the city from the titular mind-controlling e-drug virus, but there was no money or public glory in that. Mari is hunting for the hacker Grendel, who knows something she doesn’t about her past and her family, when she happens upon a black French freedom fighter, Alain, and joins his cause: taking down the nefarious Korean mega-corporation KT Sigan, which is squeezing the every last penny out of Mirador’s residents by upping the cost of internet connectivity. Anja, Mari’s rich, German-immigrant Cherry Dogs teammate, buys the team’s way into a charity Overworld tournament hosted by KT Sigan, and that may offer Mira and Alain a chance to succeed…if their tech-skills are up to the task. Wells’ continuing series of futuristic thrillers ramps up the cinematic action and humor in his multicultural, multiethnic, dystopian near future. Realistic characters, whip-smart dialogue, and carefully controlled and believable technobabble (with sprinklings of Spanish, Chinese, and more) will have thriller, SF, and video-game fans rooting for the Cherry Dogs. A high-tech, futuristic Ocean’s Eleven with teens.” –Kirkus Review

“Dan Wells’s Mirador series is an startling dystopian thrill ride that will have readers constantly looking over their shoulder.” –Bustle.com